This is the fourth post in a series delving into the various aspects of the Career Cruising database available through the East Baton Rouge Parish Library’s Digital Library. Read all posts here.

In Career Cruising, the education tab lets you research your post-secondary education path from finding majors and the right school to how to best utilize your four years of high school in order to prepare for college. It contains comprehensive information about schools and provides links to their websites. It’s a perfect one-stop-shop for your college research.

The first feature under the education tab lets you explore colleges and majors. You can search colleges by state or by major.

For Louisiana, the list includes 114 schools, which includes every kind of post-secondary school from career colleges and beauty schools to universities offering graduate degrees.

If you already know what you want to major in and want to find out which schools offer your field, you can search by major. For example, if you want to major in kinesiology or exercise science and want to find a school in Louisiana, these are your choices.

If you want to expand your search to other states, you can easily adjust the search filters.

The next feature lets you compare up to three schools side by side. It compares almost every statistic available for educational institutions. You can compare size, cost, average financial aid packages, which majors are offered, which NCAA sports teams are fielded, and, of course, admissions requirements.

If you have a number of requirements for your college and wonder which schools satisfy all of them, use the School Selector tool. Here you can choose different parameters, such as: public or private school, city, suburban, small town or rural setting, school size, admission difficulty, tuition, athletics, majors offered, and campus services. You can combine any of these criteria and see what’s possible. If it exists, Career Cruising will tell you where.

Last but not least, Career Cruising offers a planning timeline for college admissions. In a detailed description, the database describes which steps toward college choice and admission you should take during which year of high school.

As it did for occupational information, Career Cruising contains an incredible amount of data and information about post-secondary education and institutions. It is an easy-to-use tool for exploration, either to browse “what’s out there” or to do a targeted college or major search. If you are in the market for a college education, Career Cruising should be your go-to site for research.

This resource is free to you with a valid EBRPL library card through its Digital Library.

Written by Anne Nowak

Note: This article was originally published in October 2017. It has been reposted here, with updates, in order to reach a new audience.